Costa Tropical at the heart of a pioneering sustainable building project by UK and Spanish researchers CSN News

Costa Tropical has been the focus of a global collaboration that aims to create nature-based solutions for interior design and architecture.

Researchers at the University of East London and the Bagaceira Project in Barcelona, founded by Julia Steketee are working together to develop sustainable building materials using sugarcane.

Alan Chandler, Armor Gutierrez, and their students began exploring the possibilities of turning agricultural waste into building materials in 2022. 

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The research showed that the products made using this waste were superior to bricks or concrete.

Their efforts now focus on repurposing bagasse – the fibrous pulp left after extracting juice from sugarcane – from Costa Tropical’s sugarcane plantations. 

Sugarcane cultivation is widespread in 80 countries. Bagasse is traditionally used to make fuel or cattle feed. This releases carbon into the atmosphere. 

The recent Sugarcrete Project, led by British-Spanish experts, is a project that aims to trap carbon in building materials and reduce environmental impact.

Sugarcrete produces eco-friendly clay bricks that have a carbon footprint 6 times less than traditional clay bricks. 

Researchers from UEL and the Bagaceira Project conducted fieldwork on the Costa Tropical to enhance bio-waste panels. They met with local farmers and sugarcane experts.

Ron El Mondero, a rum winery, provided the bagasse required for the UEL laboratories.

The trip in southern Spain revealed the potential for Sugarcrete industrial production. This could be done by using up to 8,00,000 square miles of plantations. 

This scale would capture the carbon dioxide equivalent of 46,000 cars.

Precast concrete plants closed after the 2008 financial crisis. 

Chandler and Gutierrez Rivas want to transform their facilities for bio-based production, as supposedly ‘one entry-level machine alone can produce 1,800 blocks per hour’. 

They hope to create an ‘innovation hub in southern Spain’, which will ‘regenerate the economic, environmental and cultural heritage on the Costa Tropical’. 

They will be able to take a step further in the spring when they return to Granada and conduct more research. 

A recent press release from UEL claims that large-scale Sugarcrete production would ‘boost tourism, strengthen community identity, and support local family-run sugarcane businesses’.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine a world dominated by Sugarcrete properties.

It was used to construct a school, which will be finished in India in September 2024. Also, a prototype of the Burning Man festival, in Nevada, USA, used this technology.

UEL emphasises that the collaboration between their MArch Architecture programme and companies in India ‘exemplifies the power of global partnerships’. 

The institution says that Sugarcrete is expanding ‘to other sugar-producing regions, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Kenya, and Mexico’.